Title: David
Copperfield
Author: Charles
Dickens
Read by: Ralph Cosham
Genre/Category:
Fiction/Classic
Published: originally/1850
Published: currently/Blackstone Audio/2012
ISBN: 978-1-4551-3605-6
CDs/Hours: 27/36
Dates Listened to: 2/7/17
– 3/23/17
The book covers the period of time from David’s birth and
into his adult years. This is a timeless
story of an orphan who discovers how to survive and love in a difficult adult
world. As the back cover describes it – “It
firmly embraces all the eternal freshness, the comic delights, the tender
warmth, and the ghastly horrors of childhood.”
Yet Dickens is the supreme storyteller and I delighted in his
descriptions of infatuation that Doady, one of his numerous nicknames, has with the
feminine sex. I kept thinking why are
you falling for Emily or Dora and not Agnes?
I imagine what it would have been like to read the tale in
three chapter segments in its original form in the local newspaper between the
dates of May 1849 through November 1850.
And, maybe, to recognize the autobiographical context that Dickens often
used in his books. In any event, and
like in so many of his books (this being the eighth one) it has a happy ending.
The antagonists, Edward Murdstone and Uriah Heep are
characters you love to hate. The dear
young things, like Dora and Agnes, are so innocent and charming you fall in love with them. The movement of the story, though long, takes
you from the fictional Blunderstone, Suffolk where young Copperfield was born to
Yarmouth, a coastal town in Norfolk and then to London and Dover.
This is the sixth of his books I’ve either read or listened
to. Might just go for the other two in
the years to come. They are so worth it!
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